what became a successful career in broadcasting.
He met every goal he
“Genuine Peace”
May 25, 2008
Excerpted from The Body, by Chuck Colson
Rusty Woomer was born in 1954 in a little town in the hills of West
Virginia. The oldest of five children, he spent a lot of time outdoors. He
loved the mountains and woods around his parents' shack. Rusty felt
free in the woods, for at home his life was filled with fear, abuse, and
poverty. His father was an alcoholic who took his anger and frustration
out in drunken rages that left his family bruised and battered. Rusty
would run to the woods when his father would take to the bottle, when
his father found him, he would beat him and pull him back to the cabin.
Bob McAlister's early life was very different from Rusty's. Bob was born
in 1949. He was the only child of middle-class parents who lived in a
small, comfortable house in Greenville, South Carolina. His childhood
had all the security that loving parents could give. Bob's life was
ordered by a routine of Little League and Sunday School and Saturday
outings to his grandparents where three generations would have a
picnic and swim and fish in a pond.
In contrast, though, to Bob's security, Rusty's life grew worse. His
father's alcoholism took a more violent turn. Rusty began sleeping
under bridges and in gas station restrooms to avoid going home. Drugs
also provided an escape. By the time he was in the 9th grade, Rusty had
quit school and was shooting liquid amphetamines into his veins. By the
time he was 16, he had been arrested and was sent to live in a state
boys' camp. By age 19, he was in a state prison for stealing 14 cases of
beer.
By Bob McAlister's senior year in college, Senator Thurmond offered
him a job as a speech writer and as assistant press secretary. So in the
spring of 1972, 23-year-old Bob McAlister arrived in Washington. For
the next several years, he made the rounds with the Senator, to the
White House, to the floor of the Senate, to diplomatic receptions. By the
end of the '70s, Bob returned to South Carolina and began building
set for himself. There were White House briefings and frequent invitations
to the governor's mansion.
Now while Bob McAlister was flying high, Rusty Woomer was spinning
deeper into despair. After 3 years in prison, Rusty spent his newfound
freedom in a cycle of drugs, alcohol, and stealing to get money for more
drugs and alcohol. By age 25, he was back in prison for having raped a
15 year old girl. After 12 months in prison, he was released and returned
to West Virginia where his drug use escalated. He concocted a mixture of
amphetamines which could keep him awake for 5 days. To come down,
Rusty would drink massive quantities of whiskey, vodka, and beer which
he took with Valium.
On February 22, 1979, Rusty was high on Quaaludes, Valium, whiskey
and marijuana. With two other men he arrived in the town of
Cottageville, South Carolina. The three men broke into a house and stole
a coin collection. Rusty shot the owner, John Turner.
The three men drove several miles to the northeast and picked at random
another house to rob. There, Rusty shot and killed Arnie and Earldean
Wright.
They got back into the car, popped some more pills, drank some more
whiskey and went to Pawley's Island. At a convenience store they
kidnapped two clerks, Della Louise Sellers and Wanda Summers. Taking
the two women to a remote area, 2 of the men raped them and Rusty shot
them. Della died and Wanda lived.
The three men finished their night at a Myrtle Beach motel as the police
closed in. Just after midnight, one of the men killed himself. Rusty and the
other man were so drunk that they were easily taken into custody.
The next day, Rusty Woomer confessed to the murders.
And Paul wrote, “…bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint
against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so
you also must forgive.” Pray.
I’ve decided that there’s too much to say in this concluding sermon to say
it in one concluding sermon, so we’re going to stretch it over two weeks.
I mean, unless anybody wants an hour-and-a-half sermon today… We’re
talking today about “Genuine Peace”, the final step in the process of
peace when conflict comes. We’ve already looked at the first three of the
“four Gs of peacemaking”; let’s review them!
 • Glorify God
• Get the log out of your own
eye
• Gently restore
• Go and be reconciled
Genuine Peace involves
I. Full Forgiveness
Colossians 3:13
Context:
• A New Focus - :1-4
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on
things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have
died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is
your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
“If” should be understood as “since”, speaking to believers, and Paul
says, “since you’ve been raised with Christ from the death that bound
you, you need to replace the old focus you had with a new one: set
your eyes on Jesus. There’s nothing that ails us as Christians that can’t
be fixed by our doing that one thing: “look at Jesus”. If my eyes are on
Him, I won’t go astray. And that’ll produce in me
• A New Attitude - :5-9
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, im-
purity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On
account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once
walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all
away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with
its practices
All this stuff that came so naturally to you before? Put it to death! See,
you were spiritually dead before and those things were very much alive
in you; now that you’re alive, make those things dead in your life! And
look at the list of dirty laundry: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil
desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and ly-
ing, and surely there are other things as well. Suffice it to say that the
things that we once wanted and walked in, we can no more as believers,
as followers of Jesus. Why? Because God has given us
• A New Life - :10-11
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge
after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circum-
cised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is
all, and in all.
But how, Pastor, can I do that stuff? Some of it is mighty tempting? And
why should I? Because of this: God has given you a new life, a brand
new identity. We want to put people into groups. Blacks and whites.
Rich and poor. Republicans and Democrats. Bulldogs and Yellow Jack-
ets. Nothing’s changed; they were doing that in Jesus’ day. Greeks hated
Jews, and circumcised Jews stuck their noses in the air around uncircum-
cised Gentiles. But transcending it all is Jesus, and Jesus binds us togeth-
er, for He is all, and He is in all of those who are His people.
With that as our context, let’s look at full forgiveness; first,
A. The Priority
12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate
hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one
another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Let’s look first at some
• Misconceptions about forgiveness
o It entails forgetting
Should we “forgive and forget”? Sure, to the degree possible, but
forgetting isn’t something we can will ourselves to do. If I say, “don’t
think about purple elephants”, the one thing I’m sure you’ll do is to think
about purple elephants! And so I can’t simply will myself to forget. So
where does this notion come from that, if I haven’t forgotten something, I
haven’t forgiven it? It’s not in the Bible, that’s for sure. Now, once
something is forgiven, I’ll think differently about it, and hopefully a lot
less about it, that’s for sure, but the simple fact that an event may remain
in my memory doesn’t in and of itself mean that I’ve not forgiven it.
Rather, it is my attitude toward that event that determines whether or not
it’s been forgiven. Sometimes we can offer “empty forgiveness”. This is
fake forgiveness, forgiveness in name only, forgiveness that says, “you’re
forgiven”, but in the next breath, sets conditions: “I can never trust you
again”; “I won’t ever accept you back into my circle of friendship”; “I’ll
keep my distance”. As we’ll see in a few moments, that kind of empty
forgiveness isn’t what’s in view here. Yes, it’s true that we cannot
actually will ourselves to forget, but real forgiveness does not hold itself
aloof from the individual, doesn’t go halfway.
But doesn’t the Bible say that “God remembers our sins no more”
(Isaiah 43:25)? Yes, it does, but what’s it driving at, that God cannot
remember our sins, or that He will not remember them, in the sense of
holding them against us? I don’t believe in a God with a faulty
memory, but rather a God with a heart so big that I cannot out-sin His
ability to forgive! 2nd misconception:
o Forgiveness is primarily a feeling
We might say, “he doesn’t deserve my forgiveness”, and that might be
the way it feels to us—sure! But here’s the deal: forgiveness isn’t a
feeling. It is something I am called to do regardless of what I think or
feel about it. I can completely forgive and, at the same time, also
completely abhor the actions of the person. That leads to the 3rd:
o Forgiveness means excusing the wrong done
Some might get the idea that forgiving another person means that we
minimize what the person has done to us, that we effectively say, “ain’t
no big deal”. Now…maybe it isn’t a big deal, and maybe that’s what
we need to say; as we’ve said before, to truly overlook something is
honoring to God. Truly overlook, not “stuff and hold a grudge”. But if
it can’t be overlooked, and confrontation is called for, then we’re not
talking about engaging in a fictional flight of fantasy, acting as though
something doesn’t matter when down inside we know that it does. In
fact, the very act of forgiveness takes place when there is an offense
committed; that’s the very context of forgiveness. And because true
forgiveness deals honestly with sin, it provides a freedom to the one
forgiven that no slip-sliding around the truth of things ever could! 4th,
o It includes an immediate & complete restoration of trust
It should include a real desire to regain and rebuild trust, a willingness
to take the other person at his word, a benefit-of-the-doubt approach, but
the truth is that trust is earned over time on the basis of behavior.
• Forgiveness is a choice – not “can I”, but “will I”?
Charizomai is the Greek word here, and it means to bestow favor freely
or unconditionally. Forgiveness isn’t something earned or deserved; it
is something freely given. Another word used elsewhere in Scripture,
such as the words of the Lord in Matthew 6, is the Greek aphiemi,
which means to let go, release, or remit, often referring to debts that have
been paid or cancelled in full.
When someone sins against you, he owes a debt. Now, most of that debt
is to God; David, in his Psalm 51 prayer of confession after being
confronted regarding his sin against Uriah and Bathsheba, prays, “Lord,
against You, and You only, have I sinned”. Technically, this was not true;
he’d sinned very clearly against others, and yet David recognized that his
first sin was against a holy God. And so a person who has sinned owes a
debt to God—a debt paid in full by the death of Christ for our sins! But
that person who sinned against you owes you some of the debt as well.
And that’s where you have a choice. You can force the other person to
make payments—in the form of you gossiping, or remaining aloof, or
inflicting pain, or lashing back or seeking revenge or what-have-you. Or,
you can choose to make the payments yourself, for that person. You mark
the debt “paid in full”; then, particularly if it’s an egregious wrong that the
person has committed against you, you make a fresh choice every time
the matter comes to mind.
• You fight against the painful memories
• You speak gracious words when you’d like to tell her off
• You extend a measure of trust when you don’t really want to
See, here’s the deal: it’s a choice we can make—but it’s not a matter of
choice if we would be obedient and faithful to the Lord. We must
forgive; the good news is that we can forgive! I’ll tell you why soon…
When Bob McAlister learned of the details of the killing spree he was
repulsed. He remembers thinking with relief, "At least they caught the
man. And I hope he gets what he deserves." Bob's own life at this time
was very much in the fast lane of finance and business. Bob was very
successful, but he began admitting that he was paying a high price for all
that he was doing. Bob was hardly ever home. His first marriage ended in
divorce; and he was now into his second marriage. All the symptoms of a
life that was too fast were apparent. Finally his wife said: "When you
come home tonight, come home without a job. You are killing yourself. I
had rather have a unemployed husband than one who died on the job." So
he quit his job and started a small public relations firm. It was not long
afterwards that Christ touched his heart and mind on a busy thoroughfare
in Columbia, South Carolina. It was a sweltering day in 1984 when Bob
almost ran over an old man who was pushing himself in a wheelchair.
Bob got out of the car and asked what he was doing on the side of a busy
street pushing himself in a wheelchair. The old man told Bob that two of
his friends were sick and had no food. He was wheeling himself to a
rescue mission to get hot food for the two bedridden women. Bob asked
where the women lived and where the rescue mission was, and when told,
Bob calculated it was a 7 mile round trip, all in a wheelchair. So Bob
said to the old man: "I'll take you to the mission." Bob drove the old
man to the mission, got the food, and took the plates back to the 2 sick
women. When he saw the women who could not get out of bed, and
when Bob looked into the eyes of the old man who was risking his life in
a wheelchair to get food for his friends, Bob experienced a profound
conversion. The next year proved to be a spiritual turning point. Bob
began reading the Bible several hours a day. As he did, his gratitude for
what Christ had done for him deepened. So Bob did what Jesus told his
followers to do. He began visiting the prisons, and there he met Rusty
Woomer.
The Priority: “forgive”; it’s a command. Now, note
B. The Precedent
Matthew 6:14-15 – “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive
others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.”
“As the Lord forgave you”, the Scripture says, so you must forgive.
How did God forgive us?
• Completely – Psalm 103:8-12
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
The God of the universe, against Whom every one of us have sinned
repeatedly and totally, deigns not to hold any sin against us whatever, if
we are His children. Zero. None. That’s how God forgives us; He
completely removes our sin.
• Unconditionally
God doesn’t place conditions upon His forgiveness; He doesn’t say, “you
will remain forgiven as long as you do this or that”. God doesn’t pull the
rug out from under us, doesn’t pull the football away just as we’re about
to kick it, doesn’t lift us up only to let us down. See, your forgiveness by
God doesn’t depend upon your ability to earn it; it depends completely
upon His ability to do it, and He forgives you without condition because
He has already punished your sin, when His Son, Jesus, died on the cross.
And thus, His forgiveness is issued
• Apart from any merit of our own
It’s called “grace”, and God grants it to us apart from us deserving it. And
the person who’s offended you? He may not “deserve” forgiveness, and
you might say that fairness would dictate he not be forgiven. Get over it;
you don’t deserve it either. P.J. O’Rourke said it well: “I've got a 10-
year-old at home. She's always saying, "That's not fair." When she says
this, I say, "Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. Your family is pretty well
off. That's not fair. You were born in America. That's not fair. Darling, you
had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.”
God forgives completely, unconditionally, and apart from our merit;
• Out of His great love
“…you were dead in the trespasses and sins…but God, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we
were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by
grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming
ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus.”
How deep is the love of God? How far will His arm reach? How bad a
person do you have to be before you’re beyond the reach of God’s love
and forgiveness?
By the time Bob met Rusty he had become accustomed to terrible sights.
But what he found when he met Rusty was unlike anything he had ever
seen before.
Rusty was sitting on the floor in his cell in a trance. His face was the
color of chalk and all over him crawled dozens of cockroaches. His long
blond hair was a greasy mass. His beard was matted. He stank horribly.
The cell was covered with half-eaten sandwiches and old Playboy
magazines. As Bob looked into Rusty's face, Bob saw how low and
thorough the work of evil can be.
"Rusty" Bob said. There was no response. "Rusty." No response. Rusty
stared into space as a roach crawled over his beard. "Rusty" said Bob.
"Say the name Jesus. Just say Jesus."
For several minutes nothing happened. "Just say the name Jesus."
Very slowly Rusty said: "Jesus." He continued to stare at the wall of his
filthy cell. After about 5 minutes he repeated: "Jesus." Several more
minutes passed, and the Rusty prayed on his own. "Forgive me, Jesus.
Forgive me."
It was then that Rusty's heart cracked open and he wept from the
deepest part of his soul as he said over and over "Jesus, forgive me."
And thus began a relationship that would last through the rest of Rusty
Woomer’s life on earth—and change Bob McAlister’s life forever.
That was October, 1985.
You are instructed by God that you need to forgive; you have seen the
example of how God has forgiven you. Third, let’s look at
C. The Process
Ken Sande defines forgiveness as a decision to make 4 promises:
• “I will not dwell on this incident.”
• “I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you.”
• “I will not talk to others about this incident.”
• “I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our
personal relationship.”
In a perfect world, repentance would precede forgiveness. In a perfect
world, a person would immediately sense that he’d offended you,
immediately been convinced of his sin, and immediately repent. Show
of hands: how many of you live in that perfect world? So how do we
approach this thing of “forgiveness”? Where does the person’s
repentant spirit play into the equation? Does it matter? Let’s look at
forgiveness in two steps:
• An attitude independent of repentance
Stephen in the midst of being stoned to death: “falling to his knees he
cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against the.’”
(Acts 7:60). Jesus said that, when you stand praying, if you have
anything against anyone else, forgive that person (Mark 11:25. You are
loving the other person, standing ready to extend active forgiveness at
the first opportunity, guarding your own heart against turning bitter and
resentful, even if it takes the other person a long time to repent. I begin
with an attitude that says, “you are forgiven, before you ask for it”; in
doing so, I make the first of the four promises: “I will not dwell on this
incident”. But that’s not the end, if we’re seeking genuine peace.
• An action dependent on repentance
Granting forgiveness is conditional upon repentance on the part of the
offender. Here’s where it gets personal, and here’s where I keep the other
three promises of forgiveness, not to bring up the incident again, nor to
talk to others about it, nor to allow it to come between yourself and the
other person. Until repentance is forthcoming, we can’t make these
promises, for we may need to do the first two, and the third is already in
play (there’s a breached relationship already). Once a person repents,
though, real forgiveness will entail making and keeping these promises!
And note that Jesus lived this out: on the cross, He cried out, “Father,
forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing”, and then, on the
Day of Pentecost, with some of the very people there who called out for
Jesus’ blood, Peter preached, they repented, and God forgave their sin and
added thousands to the church that very day. Jesus’ attitude was one of
forgiveness; upon repentance, God’s action was one of forgiveness!
“OK, I know I’m supposed to forgive, and that it’s a choice I can make. I
know the extent to which I must forgive if it is to be real; I know that I
must first make an attitudinal choice to forgive, and then, if/when
repentance is forthcoming, I actively extend forgiveness. I can grasp all
this intellectually; fine. But I just don’t know if I can pull it off!”
D.The Power –
Philippians 4:13
“I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me”.
Rusty Woomer was the 244th person to sit in the electric chair in the
history of the state of South Carolina. His original appointment with
death was to be on June 16, 1989, some ten years following the killing
spree that had left four people dead. But a last-minute reprieve from the
Supreme Court delayed the execution; still, both Rusty and Bob knew that
it was a matter of time. In the ensuing four years, Bob and Rusty had
become the closest of friends, and God had worked the most incredible
transformation in Rusty’s life, to the point where Rusty Woomer became
the instrument of God to touch many lives in prison, and the regular visits
that Bob made to minister to Rusty turned into times when Rusty much they loved and respected him. But Rusty began ministering to them,
ministered to Bob. telling them again of the power of Jesus to transform their lives.

But the reprieve gave Rusty the final piece of freedom missing from his There was no farewell spoken between Rusty and Bob. They had agreed
personal puzzle. That summer of 1989 a letter made its way through the to that months before. Their last words to each other were only these:
prison security checks to Rusty’s cell. He eagerly picked up the plain "Look to Jesus." And at one o'clock in the morning on April 27th, 1990,
envelope—then trembled when he saw the return address. It was from Rusty Woomer saw Jesus.
Lee Hewitt, the younger brother of Della Louise Sellers, the woman
whose murder Rusty would die for. Here’s what the letter said: Table Talk
“For years, I hated you with all my heart. I could have blown
your brains out for what you did to my sister. I only regretted you
were in prison where I couldn’t get to you.
But I’ve spent time in jail myself—fifty-six different times over
the years. I felt like a failure. But then I became a Christian. And
the more I learned about being a Christian, the more I knew I had
to forgive you. I didn’t want to. But it got to where I couldn’t even
prayer the Lord’s prayer—‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us.’
It made me so mad—now I had to forgive you. Now the ball was
in my court. I’ve prayed about it, and God has done a miracle in
my heart. I forgive you. We are brothers in Christ. I love you.
Your brother, Lee Hewitt.”

Yes, you can forgive. Lee Hewitt’s sister was brutally raped and
murdered by a madman, and yet when the Spirit of God got ahold of this
man’s heart, he could forgive and call Rusty Woomer his brother in
Christ, tell him from his heart that he loved him. Rusty, the guilty party,
wasn’t the only man freed by Lee Hewitt’s forgiveness; notice that Lee
was forgiven as well. And he found out the truth of Philippians 4:13,
which says, “I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength.”

Rusty's execution date was set for Friday, April 27, 1990 at 1:00 a.m.
On Thursday, April 26, Rusty's family came to see him. Rusty had long
ago written his father that he had forgiven him, but now he could tell
him face to face. Which is exactly what he did. He forgave him for all
the abuse, and then he had his family to hold hands and pray.

At 11:00 p.m. Rusty was taken to have his head shaved. Bob McAlister
went with him. While the barber shaved clumps of blond hair from
Rusty's head, Bob read from Revelation: "And He shall wipe away every
tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall
no longer be any mourning or crying or pain."

When Rusty's head was shaved, the wardens began telling him how